One key to successfully operating a facility is the effectiveness of the training delivered to plant operations and support personnel. The character and quality of the instructors are critical elements of that effectiveness. Also crucial is supporting management and the instructors with tools that enable delivery of consistent, high quality, job related instruction and support associated record keeping and audit requirements.
Existing systems and methods for work force planning and occupational readjustment, have traditionally concentrated mainly on the manual analysis of an individual's skills, with little or no emphasis on a related job analysis or needs analysis of potential employers. Additionally, the current state of the art fails to link training resources and new training requirements as part of an overall approach.
In highly regulated industries such as nuclear energy, airline, hazardous waste management, etc., one of the requirements placed upon operators is to ensure that all personnel are in-fact qualified to perform each of the duties that they are assigned to perform. For example, nuclear facilities are governed according to the regulations outlined in 10 CFR 55 (Jan. 1, 1993), et seq. These regulations establish procedures and criteria for the issuance of licenses to operators and senior operators of utilization facilities (nuclear facilities) licensed pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, or section 202 of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, as amended, and 10 CFR 50 (Jan. 1, 1993).
Although formal training programs, job experience and an understanding of procedural requirements can help an employee, there is little systematic help available to provide an assurance to an employer that the employee possess the necessary certifications and licenses to perform a particular task or duty, and is in compliance with all applicable statutes and regulations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,468 issued to Silver, et al. on Apr. 26, 1977, discloses a system which relates to gaining knowledge of specific apparatus, tools, or processes. It serves to teach a technician how to troubleshoot and repair an apparatus and functions primarily as a training device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,772 issued to Slade, et al. on Jun. 9, 1987, discloses a training tool designed to be used by students to develop specific skills based upon an application provided stimuli. The stimuli are altered based on user responses to output that is generated by the training tool.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,384 issued to Slade on Sep. 5, 1989, relates to an interactive learning approach rather than the development of training to enhance required competence of the workers assigned to specific jobs.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,869 issued to Holt on May 4, 1993, describes an application specific to the banking field and is not directed to personnel training activity. This system is directed to a character recognition tool directed specifically to written numerals.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,294 issued to below on Oct. 5, 1993, describes a mechanism for the association of stored text based information. The association is based upon common attributes of the text based data which are or maybe classified by context. Information may then be retrieved by context in a method that is similar to methods employed by typical Internet search engines or library locator applications. The mechanism does not provide the user with a graphic rich display of relationships that exist between an employee and the tasks, skills, learning objectives and referenced based objectives and criteria that are required for adequate job competence.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,270,920 issued to Pearse, et al. on Dec. 14, 1993, refers to a system designed to produce a schedule for training air crew or others based upon available training services and user initiated requests. It does not provide for the integration of training materials with parent job competencies or tasks and does not maintain a history of the completion of training.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,673 issued to Fan on Dec. 16, 1994, discloses a system to evaluate "verbal" responses or text based responses in relation to some defined criteria. It provides a pseudo-intelligent tool for the determination of perception as reported by a sample population.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,694 issued to Parrish, et al. on May 15, 1995, discloses a system for assessing an individual's acquisition of specifically identified skills and abilities and the relationship of those skills and abilities to an identified occupation. The system as described in the Parish patent may be characterized as an attempt to embody an employee selection process into a computer based system.